The Corner Penthouse

Kino Lorber has just released The Time Guardian (1987) on Blu-ray. Read on to find out more about it...


The Time Guardian (1987) is a story set in the far future of 4039, where the Earth is a scarred and desolate battlefield. Hoards of armored Jen-Diki robots created by man in the previous century, are sweeping the planet, brutally destroying everything in their path and threatening mankind with extinction. The few surviving people live in the City, a huge, protected construction with the ability to travel through space and time. The City travels back to 1988 in hopes of evading capture and forever changing the future. However, the peace of the past is broken by the arrival of their relentless enemy.


When I received the press mailing from Kino Lorber advertising their July releases, the awesome 1980s poster artwork for The Time Guardian caught my eye. I've never heard of this film before, but looking at that poster art (see image at the top of this article), I was intrigued. I expected a cheesy B-movie, and it's definitely that. I could easily see this movie shown and riffed upon on Mystery Science Theater 3000.


The film borrows heavily from The Terminator, First Blood (the nasty Sheriff), and Star Wars. The influence of The Terminator should be pretty obvious if you read the plot synopsis in the second paragraph. The movie doesn't hide this influence when a clip from The Terminator is shown on a television when the mechanic calls the Sheriff for help just before he is murdered by the Jen-Diki (at timecode 1:06:55). The clip used is near the end of the movie, when Kyle and Sarah have entered the factory, and Kyle flips a bunch of switches on a console. On the Blu-ray, the image on the television set is BLURRED, likely because the film clip was not properly licensed. (You can still make out the flipping of switches and close-ups of machines starting to run.) I tried to see if I could find an unblurred copy of the movie online. A widescreen copy of the movie that was posted in March 2016 is also blurred. The other copy, which is hosted by the Internet Archive, is a cropped 4:3 pan-and-scan VHS copy. The shot in question is at 1:04:14 in this copy, but you can't see the television due to it being cut out of the cropped picture. The copy uploaded in 2016 (I won't provide a link to it as you should buy the Blu-ray for the glorious widescreen version) proves to me that Kino Lorber didn't do the blurring, as it predates this Blu-ray by five years. Unless it was blurred in the original theatrical release (not likely), copyright owner MGM must have done it at some point in the past 34 years. What's confusing about this is that Hemdale produced both movies and MGM owns both movies, so licensing shouldn't be an issue.


American actress Carrie Fisher was cast in the picture after her worldwide success in the original three Star Wars films. The influence doesnt end with the casting. The bad guys are named Jen-Diki, which I'm sure was derived from the name "Jedi" (JEn-DIki). The Jen-Diki make breathing sounds just like Darth Vader; and when they remove their armor, the Jen-Diki look like elderly Darth Vader after he takes his helmet off. However, the most obvious nod to Star Wars is a little Easter egg that appears at the 12:02 mark. Just before arriving in the year 4008, amongst the scrolling letters and numbers on a display is "R2D2C3PO".


Carrie Fisher (Petra) and Dean Stockwell (Boss) are the only American actors in the film, and are quite likely to be the only actors you will have heard of. The rest of the cast are Australians, and are complete unknowns to me. Boss is seen a few times, wearing the most atrociously gaudy "future" clothing, taking care of business in the City (which looks more like a spaceship on the inside). Petra goes out to explore 1988 Australia with Ballard (Tom Burlinson). While wearing body armor with clearly-defined breasts, Petra gets injured and has to stay in hiding, which is an excuse to limit the screentime of the two main "stars". Ballard eventually finds a local named Annie (Nikki Coghill), and the majority of the picture is spent with Ballard and Annie. There's not too much to say as I found the relationship between Ballard and Annie to be rather boring, though I enjoyed the brief look at Nikki Coghill's breasts.


The Time Guardian is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:27:31. Audio languages include English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono. The film includes English SDH subtitles.


Here's a list of all of the bonus features that can be found on the Blu-ray disc. First, a note about the "Trailer Compilation": Most studios include "bonus trailers" (sometimes called "previews" or "sneak peeks") on their discs, which are trailers and advertisements that are there simply to promote the studio's other offerings. They're usually shoved in the viewer's face on disc boot-up and are a pain to skip. Kino Lorber does something entirely different. Their "bonus trailers" are more like the Drive-In Delirium and Trailer Trauma trailer compilation Blu-rays. They are trailers that are from the same era or genre/theme as the main feature, or are for other movies with the same leading actor. These trailers are for movies from a variety of studios, most of which have not even been released by Kino Lorber! These trailers are included as actual bonus material and are not there to sell you something.

• Theatrical Trailer #1 (2:00)
• Theatrical Trailer #2 (1:31)
• Trailer Compilation - The following trailers from the same genre or era as The Time Guardian are included: The Time Travelers (1964) (2:25), Rollerball (1975) (0:52), Eye of the Tiger (1986) (2:15), and Trackdown (1976) (2:53). The trailers are not listed separately in the menu, but are shown one after another when you select "Trailers" from the menu; the two trailers for the feature play first.

The Time Guardian (1987) is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber/Scorpion Releasing. No digital copy code voucher or slipsleeve is included.


All images were taken from the Blu-ray by me (Paul Rudoff), and have since been uploaded to the IMDB gallery of the film along with a lot more images. This item has been provided by Kino Lorber for review on this site.